Commander's Rounds Volume 1

Gaiden Entry 16.5- The Good New Days

Z23 stood outside of the headquarters building, holding a keyring that had everything she needed to move about the entire building. Not that she would need to, since the commander had made sure to divide the responsibilities between certain trusted people before he left. Enterprise would be in charge of any military matters, since she could be trusted to keep a cool head, and she would be left in charge of administrative matters.

Which, as far as Azur Lane meant, she was going to be keeping some of the paper moving.

She arrived in the early morning, and came in to find that the place had become unspeakably tidy- the maids must have been through here over the past couple of days, and everything smelled quite fresh. The commander's office itself was certainly more tidy- everything had been put in good order, which was the surest sign that the commander hadn't been through there in the past few days.

She didn't expect there would be much strange or new that needed doing, seeing that the commander probably wouldn't leave any standing orders to conduct new operations while he was away, so she decided to let her curiosity get the better of her and do a little exploring. The only thing she found locked up in commander's desk was his combat knife and service pistol, both of which were well-cleaned and maintained, even though they were conspicuously useless against the enemies he was meant to fight.

The first order of business that he left to her, however, was to check the safe, and make sure that there were eight things in there. It didn't specify what, just... Eight.

The safe that was in that side closet could probably withstand weapons of naval warfare better than she could.

It was also a laborious process to unlock it even though she had all of the proper keys and passcodes to do so- whatever was in there was something that commander wanted to be absolutely safe from anyone or anything.

After pulling open the thick door, she found eight thick envelopes, and she realized that these were probably contingency orders in case something happened to him. There was one for Enterprise, Warspite, Bismarck, Nagato, Yat Sen, Richelieu, Vittorio Veneto, and... Yuubari? She could imagine why there was one for the other seven- they were the leaders commander probably trusted most to carry out his orders, but why one specifically for Yuubari? That was a question for later. There were eight things in there, so she put each of them back in, and shut the door.

With that out of the way, she had a look around the office. It was a comfortable workspace, for one, so she could get used to working in a place like this. It was no wonder the commander wound up with a reputation for trying to work beyond his limits- there was nothing in the surroundings here that was unpleasant- in addition to everything else, there was plenty of light from the outside. It was such a quaint sort of space, that there was just something she had to do.

She just had to do her stretches, like she always did before studying. Sure, Tennessee or Baltimore might argue that she wasn't really doing any exercise, and that was true, but only up to a point- she was probably going to be sitting in the same place for a long while, and she would be doing something that would be taxing her mind. Her stretches were as much mental preparation as physical.

Z23 dove right on into the work that commander had to deal with. She began to understand why he had relied on her to make sense of the reports that pointed out the location of a secret research facility, because, while looking through the various orders, she could see that certain ships had managed to slip in some "personal items" into the supply requisitions, and she had a strong notion of who exactly ordered what.

Authentic 18th century chessboard? Valiant.

Replacement bunny suit? North Carolina.

Idol magazines? ...She would say Lexington but the delivery code is for Friedrich? ...That had to be a mistake.